


Three Things That Didn't Happen in The Search for Spock

by Nikita



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Brain Damage, Character Death, M/M, Pon Farr, Sorrow, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 04:44:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1592087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nikita/pseuds/Nikita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These were supposed to be five stories that DIDN’T happen in ‘The Search for Spock’ - inspired by Spiced Peaches (an online Spock/McCoy Zine) - ‘What If’ issue, but I never finished it.  </p><p>Each scenario is different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Each scenario takes place during some point in the movie, but it can be at any point: beginning, middle or end. And they aren't in any order. Just FYI.
> 
> (I originally meant to write five short stories for this, but I failed. I hoped to get back and finish, but I'm going to have to move on.)

****** 

1.

 

The body - for it was no more than that – had died before Leonard could even get it to sickbay. He had heard the last breath that rattled in the lungs and no amount of effort could get the heart beating again. Instead, he'd sat on the cold metal floor of the corridor and held a body that looked remarkably like the one he'd seen on the floor of the Enterprise engine room. Leonard had smoothed back the black hair from the same brow he'd known before - the slanted eyebrows and olive-tinted skin were the same as he remembered. The hair was longer and the face was less lined, whether it was a few years younger or a lack of life experience he couldn't say. The body was slimmer and far less muscled. It was Spock and it wasn't.

It wasn't the man he'd loved. The infuriating pointy-eared devil who had verbally sparred with him on the deck of the Enterprise. The coolly logical and utterly irritating bastard that believed he'd won every single one of those debates. The low voice and slim fingers that traced his features with a burning hot touch. The one person in the universe that could melt an old Southern gentleman to a puddle with a finely arched eyebrow. The only person he'd ever felt truly comfortable with and shared himself fully with - warts and all. Spock had been the one to make him whole. 

And now the only chance they might have had was gone. Well and truly dead, sealed in a container in the Klingon sickbay to be taken back to Vulcan at the earliest opportunity.

Starfleet has sent two ships to escort them back to Earth. The Federation can’t wait to get their hands on the Klingon technology suddenly available to them, but even more urgent is the chance to convict the Enterprise crew that resides within it. They want to make an example of Jim Kirk - to punish him for his crimes.

They needn't bother. The last time Leonard checked in with Jim Kirk he saw a broken man. The loss of his ship and his son he might have recovered from, but Bones saw the light in those hazel eyes die with the sight of Spock dead again on that cold floor. At one time McCoy might have tried to comfort his friend, but he has no words now. No hope. It died a second time and there is no reviving it.

Leonard sighs and closes his eyes - alone in the quarters he's chosen for himself. The faint smell of alien sweat and blood coupled with a rock hard bed make sleep impossible. He tosses and turns, staring at the walls, trying not to think of his quarters back on the Enterprise. Trying not to imagine Spock might enter at any moment and lie down next to him.

It’s going to be a long voyage home.

 


	2. Chapter 2

****** 

2.

 

None of the crew had known quite what to expect from the Vulcan ritual being performed on the altar before them, but the broken creature that had risen from one of the tables certainly wasn’t something they’d truly contemplated.

The man being supported by two sturdy acolytes was bobbing his head erratically as they neared the crew. Uhura gasped as the face was revealed from the shadows – the eyes were wide and crazed and there were strings of saliva trailing down from slack lips. Jim took a step forward and halted just short of touching the man – a hand covering his mouth as he stared in horror at his friend. 

“What happened?!” he asked angrily. The two hooded Vulcans said nothing. Sarek stepped down from the dais and held out a hand, halting any further words until he was closer to them.  

“Kirk,” he said quietly, but firmly, “this is not the time or place for this display of emotion. Spock requires quiet contemplation as he acclimates to the results of the _fal-tor-pan_ \- ”

Jim’s face flushed as he jerked his head back to the drooling figure beside them. “And what about these results? Is he going to ‘acclimate,’ too?!”

Sarek gazed steadily at the pathetic display for a moment and turned back to Kirk.

“There is a 97.84% chance that he will not.”

 

***

 

12 standard weeks later.

 

Leonard H. McCoy, former CMO of the USS Enterprise lay silently on a small pallet made up with crisp white linens and a colorful quilt of African design. The human was pale and thin, but otherwise he seemed healthy. There was a stack of recordings on the table beside the bed and a holo propped up next to them. Closer inspection revealed that the holo was a wedding picture of Commanders Uhura and Scott.

Spock noted these details carefully as he quietly pulled a chair closer to the bed upon which to sit. He needn’t have bothered – the human was unaware of his existence and probably would not have stirred if a large brass band had paraded through the room just then. Spock blinked at the illogical notion of such an event occurring and filed it away among the other ideas and thoughts that came to mind all too often since his Return. 

He still was unsure of the reasoning he had used in deciding to visit this ward. His mother had insisted he was right in feeling an urge to come and see the man who lay before him, but he had a feeling his father would not agree. It was not logic that brought him here, but a feeling…something he was not trained to act on as a Vulcan.

But as his mother reminded him: he was half human.

In any event, he had made the trip and he was already in the hospital room so he decided to finish what he had started before deciding whether the action had been a mistake or not. And so…what would his mother suggest he do now that he was there? Speak to the invalid, no doubt, whether he could understand speech or not.

“Hello, Dr. McCoy,” he said in a crisp and even tone. Perhaps he sounded too severe. His mother had made some effort in instructing him to soften his tone and speech patterns when speaking to people who had been friends with him in his former life. Leonard McCoy certainly qualified as such.

“I am unsure of exactly what is expected of one when visiting a patient in your condition; however I recall reading an article claiming there is some benefit in sensory stimulation in human patients suffering neurological impairments.”

There was, predictably, no response to this from the still form on the bed. The lack of response disturbed him. Spock was struck with the urge to fidget in his chair; he stifled the impulse.

Several long moments passed as Spock searched for something else to say. As he stared at the blue eyes staring blankly in his general direction he realized that the article he’d read once had been recommended to him by the CMO of the Enterprise himself. 

He no longer remembered the reason why McCoy had suggested he read the article, but he remembered those blue eyes looking into his as he spoke. The lines of his face had been composed in a serious expression at the time, but he also remembered times when there had been small crinkle lines around the eyes while Leonard had smiled or laughed at a joke Jim told or something inadvertently funny that Spock had said. He also remembered a sated look upon the doctor’s face after a sexual encounter between the two of them, blue eyes vibrant in color yet softened with some indefinable emotional response.

And he remembered the frantic look in those eyes as they stared through the clear partition separating the two of them in Engineering.

**_“Don’t! Spock! Please!!”_ **

The tortured cries of his lover sounded loudly in his memory. Spock found his breathing growing shallow as he remembered the fear and desperation of those final moments.

These were not his emotions at the time…they were Leonard’s. _Fear, love, desperation, anger, despair…_

Spock took control of his breathing and slowed his heart rate back to his average resting level. The man on the bed remained in the same state he’d been in since Spock’s arrival. The silence in the room seemed suddenly oppressive and intolerable. Spock stood up and moved the chair back to its original position.

“This is not a constructive use of my time,” he said to the room in general, his eyes on the floor to avoid looking at the form on the bed. “Goodbye.” With this last word he opened the door, ready to step out of the room.

_T'hy'la_

The word was a ghostly whisper, but he was unsure if it was only in his mind or if the figure on the bed had spoken. He looked back, but Leonard had not moved and his eyes were still staring, unseeing, at some spot off to his left. Spock paused, waiting. Then, deciding he had been mistaken, he stepped out into the hallway and closed the door.

 


	3. Chapter 3

***** 

3.

 

The ship lurched and McCoy cursed as he tried to stay on his feet. Obviously the bridge crew had other things to do than figure out how to use the inertial dampers on the blasted tin can they were flying. 

“Hold on there, Spock,” he muttered mostly to himself as he reached his target of the biobed nearest to him. 

He expected the Vulcan form to still be unconscious, as it had been since their arrival at Genesis, but instead he found the eyes were open and looking back at him. McCoy felt his heart jump into his throat and knew it had nothing to do with inefficient inertial dampers. 

“Oh, you’re awake…” he said stupidly. He supposed he should contact Jim, but he was reluctant to move away from the steady gaze pinning him in place. “It’s okay, Spock…we’re going home. To Vulcan.” 

The man before him blinked, but it was clear he didn’t understand. Saavik had given him a rather sketchy report of her time on the planet, but the gist of it was that the man before him was little more than an infant in an adult Vulcan’s body. He supposed the best thing to do in this situation would be to tranquilize the patient and wait until their arrival on Vulcan for further answers, but something stopped him from using the Klingon hypospray he’d managed to alter something close to resembling Federation standards.

“Spock?” he whispered. Those brown eyes stared back at him without a spark of the man he’d known behind them and yet he still couldn’t bring himself use the hypospray. Deciding that holding the device as if it were a shield between the two of them was foolish, he put it down on the tray near the bed and placed his hands gently on the edge of the bed.

The eyes left his face and turned to stare at his hands. Spock had never looked as lost as the man on the biobed did at that moment. The sight wrenched Leonard’s heart to see. He felt an instinctive need to reach out and comfort the poor figure before him, but he was reluctant to touch him all the same. The Vulcan touch telepathy was still there, even if the mind wasn’t. And Leonard’s emotions were far too erratic and overwhelming at the moment for an unshielded and untrained Vulcan to bear. He removed his hands and took a step back from the bed.

The brown eyes lifted back to look intently into McCoy’s once more. 

“What is it, Spock?” McCoy finally said with growing frustration. “If you’ve got any bright ideas about what we’re going to do now I’m all ears.” He wasn’t sure which Spock he was talking to at the moment – the one on the bed or the one in his head.

They were racing to Vulcan as fast as they could, but they still had no idea what would happen when they arrived. Saavik was as clueless as they were.

The man on the bed shifted, suddenly curling up in fetal position, his face contorting in pain. McCoy grabbed the tricorder he’d recalibrated and ran it over the Vulcan.

It couldn’t be. And yet a second pass of the tricorder gave him the same readings.

Pon Farr. 

McCoy set the tricorder down and glared at the sickbay doors. Saavik had come to check on Spock twice since they’d escaped Genesis. Now he had a good idea why: she was expecting this. The ramifications began to sink in. Alone on the planet with a rapidly aging Vulcan male…she’d been acting strangely protective and…dare he think it?

A cry of pain broke his brooding and McCoy gave in to his need to comfort. He stroked the shaggy mane of hair and whispered softly into a pointed ear, “It’s okay, Spock…shhh…it’s all right…I’m here.”

Tears streamed down Spock’s face as he looked up at him. His eyes were filled with such pain that it broke Leonard’s face to see it. Distantly he noted that no compassionate person, much less someone that cared for Spock, could have ignored such a plea for help. Saavik had obviously done the right thing. Any feelings of personal betrayal or hurt he felt would obviously have to be put aside. Spock had the physical need to mate. And he’d be damned if it would be Saavik this time around.

Leonard searched the sickbay doors until he found a locking mechanism.

 


End file.
